Poland was both trickier and yet eventually easier to rationalise than originally perceived. I have scanned through many a country now, and Poland seems to be the last of those with sufficient numbers of high calibre pedal builders to warrant a dedicated feature*. As noted before - these sorts of article take quite a lot of work to complete - and so this is the last of these I will be doing for a while.

* Note that USA and Japan are the leading pedal builders of the world still and too...

I feel Boss still kind of bossed it in 2018 - with 3 heavy hitters that took on all-comers in those categories - the Katana Air, Katana Artist and Nextone Artist - a trio pretty much suited for any sort of conditions - the first as the best of the portable practice amps - and the latter two as the ultimate versatile gigging-machines - for those that still like to lug amps around.

I feel that this sort of cabinet form factor of amp will be largely restricted to more fixed locations as ...

After the Best of French roundup, the German leg of the European tour turned out to be quite arduous. Germany have easily as many pedal builders as he UK but with a little more strength in depth. There’s a mix of everything from Germany - both vintage and innovation, and they’re of course very strong in the area of overdrive and distortion as backed up by their many superb high-gain amp builders.

Overall, I felt that there were a few more brands here that I was familiar ...

I always expect to be excited by the new prospects introduced at Summer NAMM, but it can be somewhat antic-climactic, particularly compared to this year’s very formidable Winter NAMM show. Several pedals that were announced there are still alas somewhat in the ether. I was expecting to see updates of the Empress Zoia and the Keeley Stereo Tape Delay pedal - but those were not forthcoming, which most probably means some production delays - I certainly can’t imagine the Zoia is going ...

I will preface this article with two statements - firstly, I currently run a stereo rig with a 39-pedal-chain, going into a Boss Katana KT100 on the left channel, and an all-tube Carvin V3MC on the right. The Katana is obviously a digital modelling amp based on an EL34 tube amp profile, while the Carvin V3MC runs on proper EL84 tubes - which gives you a lovely warm, dynamic and sparkly tone. The two amp profiles combine really well together to give you a beautifully harmonically rich and wide-...

I know many guitar aficionados prefer to spend most of their money on amps, then guitars, then pedals. While in many ways I’m the other way around really. Although I wouldn’t mind spending around £2K for an amp or a guitar once I’ve saved up, my guitar will always take precedence as the highest ticket value item. For me the guitar is the start of the tone journey, and so much of what is important in handling a guitar and achieving great tone and dynamics is impacted by ...

It’s taken me a while, but I’ve really fallen into a pattern for the kinds of amps I like. Being an entirely home player, I really don’t need anything above 50 Watts, and in fact 99% of the time I need a lot lot less. The thing all home-play amps need to have is some kind of attenuation or power scaling - so that you can achieve fully saturated tones at low volumes.

One of the key reasons home players use so many pedals is that it’s usually the best and ...

Although my focus of late has very much been on pedals, I do of course still harbour a desire to improve my amp backline. As reported on several occasions now - I run an extensive pedal chain through a stereo rig with a Boss Katana 100 on the left channel and a Carvin V3MC (50W) on the right - piling everything into the front of those two amps while making great use of the TC Electronic Mimiq, and mostly playing at scaled down volumes - entirely for home-use - but still plenty raucous enough.
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If you are in the market for an electric guitar, there are actually just 3 brands which together still totally dominate and skew the entire marketplace. And while the birthplace of the modern guitar (USA) has become more open-minded towards brands from other points of origination. The UK is still very much overly skewed toward just a handful of brands. I’ve just completed watching the highlights of the BBC Big Day Out event in Hull, and the dominance of Fender, Gibson and Marshall is ...

As posted previously, I only got back into guitar again last year, and a whole lot has changed since I was then involved. And while my Tone Quest has by and large been a hugely rewarding and successful endeavour, I made some significant mistakes in my early amp choices.

In my endeavour to keep things simple, I thought I could buy a great guitar, and an equally great modelling amp to cover all the bases / sounds I would need to generate. I was intrigued by the Line 6 Amplifi 150 - ...